Fiducial marks are widely used in manufacturing to enable an article of manufacture to be located or “registered.” For example, it is well known in the prior art that the registration of a rigid article of manufacture can be accomplished by establishing three non-collinear fiducial reference points in the coordinate system of the article. Each fiducial reference point is merely a mathematical abstraction, and, therefore, a tangible representation of each fiducial reference point must be affixed to the article of manufacture. The tangible representation of a fiducial reference point is a fiducial mark.
After the fiducial marks are affixed to the article, the lateral location and angular orientation of the article can be determined by locating the fiducial reference marks. There are, however, disadvantages with fiducial marks in the prior art.